No Man is ever free, and he couldn’t stand it if he
were - William Faulkner

The 4th Most Dangerous Organization Against
Freedom of Choice

ABC reports that 60 million Americans have to abide by
various homeowners' association rules, which "decree everything from what
color you can paint your house to how often your trash gets picked up and where
you can park your car."

Rarely does a week go by where we don’t hear of some
control-freak homeowners association trampling freedom of choice.It fully escapes me as to why anyone would
choose to live under such rules…we have enough dumb rules and regulations
forced upon us by federal, state and local governments.

Most recently, a Macedonia, OH man is being skewered
by an association for flying the American flag from a pole vs. his home.Twenty of his neighbors are sticking by this
war veteran.

Oh, the most dangerous
organization is the Fed, followed by Congress and local governments.

There’s little question our freedoms are eroding and
few in Congress (or mainstream America) seems to give a damn.

On
another note…

An entry-level salary often doesn't go very far
these days. According to a study by the Heldrich Center, the median
starting salary for those who graduated from four-year degree programs in 2009
and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who graduated in 2006 to
2008, before the recession. (Try living on $27,000 a year -- before taxes -- in
a city like New York, Washington or Chicago.)

With that in mind, read the short piece below about Economic
Hell in America.

Heal a blister with moisturizer.Even though I do it all the time, you’re not
supposed to pop a blister; instead, apply moisturizer and cover with a bandage
for faster healing.

Pm’s Betty Shocker Compendium of Useful
Resources

Sites for Selling Used Baby Goods

Kids grow
quickly and are always in need of new clothing and other items.Here are a few online sites to sell off what
you no longer need.

>Storkbrokers.com - Designed for parents who
wish to trade or sell their baby related stuff without the headaches of eBay or
Craigslist.Free registration and you
can begin to buy and sell quickly.

>thredUp.com - Essentially an online
clothing swap.To sell, members fill a
medium postal service flat rate box and list the contents on the site.Buyers choose the box they want, then pay a
service fee and shipping costs.

>SwapBabyGoods.com - You can sell or trade
used baby gear through listings under its numerous categories to find items
you’re interested in. Then contact the seller to arrange for either payment or
a swap.

Source: Parenting.com

A Little Recipe to create a great holiday feast

LIME AND CHILI CHICKEN BREASTS

2

teaspoons chili powder

2

teaspoons packed brown sugar

2

teaspoons grated lime peel

1/2

teaspoon salt

1/4

teaspoon garlic powder

1/8

teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne)

4

boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 1 1/4 lb)

2

teaspoons olive or canola oil

1 Heat gas or charcoal
grill. In small bowl, mix chili powder, brown sugar, lime peel, salt, garlic
powder and ground red pepper. Rub both sides of chicken with oil, then with
spice mixture. 2 Place chicken on grill over medium heat. Cover grill; cook 10
to 15 minutes, turning once or twice, until juice of chicken is clear when
center of thickest part is cut (170°F).

Signs you got
too much sun

>To your husband’s
delight, the only thing you can wear is a smile

>Your two-year-old keeps
calling you Elmo

>Your friend is trying to
match her lipstick to your arm

Run out of spackling?Use white toothpaste in its place using a spackling knife.Smooth and let dry and then repaint.

Conquer your debt

This site is highly acclaimed for its focus on money
issues, providing a practical education in practical money matters.

Before the federal government "fixes" the
problems of rural America, perhaps it should focus on "fixing" many
of the other problems it has created first....

*Growing numbers of military veterans cannot find jobs
once they leave the U.S. military. In fiscal 2008, the Pentagon spent $450
million on unemployment benefits for military vets. In fiscal 2010, the
Pentagon spent almost twice as much - $882 million. According to
the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for military
veterans between the ages of 18 and 24 is more than 30%.

According to a recent CNN poll, 48 percent of Americans believe that "another Great
Depression" is likely within the next 12 months. Americans have been
waiting for almost three years for a "recovery" to materialize, but
instead there are all kinds of signs that the economy is about to get worse yet
again. Inflation is rising but wages are not. There are millions of Americans
that would do just about anything to get a decent job. The "misery
index" is the highest it has been in almost 30 years. All of the recent
polls show that the American people are more pessimistic about the economy than
at any other time in recent memory.

Economic Hell For American Families

My husband lost his long-term job in 2009 due to
budget cuts. Don’t worry, I said. I’m still working, and we have a year of our
salary in savings. You’re smart, you’re educated, you’re a hard worker. You’ll
find a job soon.

Two months later, my long-term job was sent to India.

I still wasn’t worried. I’m smart, I’m educated, and
I’m a smart worker.

A year and a half later, I haven’t found new career
yet. I’m 50. No one is going to hire me. I am working – at a Home Depot. At a
79% pay cut from my prior position. But it doesn’t pay for anything. My husband
found a new position in his field – at a 62% pay cut from his prior position.

We lived off unemployment and our savings, until both
ran out. We put our house and investment property on the market the day after I
lost my job.

We haven’t had one offer.

We just had our Chapter 7 bankruptcy discharged. Our
foreclosure is still pending. No word yet when that will be done.

To add insult to injury, we owe Federal income taxes
on the penalties we used to make withdrawals from our 401(k)’s to live off. My
husband took a job in another state, and we were SHOCKED to learn that we owed
NEW YORK STATE taxes on the income he earned in Mississippi – to New York
state! Apparently there is some loophole that if you are a property owner in
New York, but earn income in another state, you have to pay New York state
income taxes on out of state earned income.

We’ve been told once our foreclosure is finalized, we
may owe taxes on that as well.

What happened to our country

"Strictly
speaking, it probably is not “necessary” for the federal government to tax
anyone directly; it could simply print the money it needs. However, that would
be too bold a stroke, for it would then be obvious to all what kind of
counterfeiting operation the government is running. The present system
combining taxation and inflation is akin to watering the milk; too much water
and the people catch on."
-- Ron Paul

The Parting Shot - Is Class Warfare on the horizon?Revolt of the Have-nots

I’ve written extensively on the huge income inequality
gap, the decimation of the middle class and our jobs, falling values of homes,
inflationary ravages on our buying power and more.

The economic plight and frustrations of the middle
class barely get a sound bite on the national news and even less discussion in
Washington (they won’t bite the hand that feeds them).Corporate controlled media rarely even
mentions the new wave of violence being perpetrated by gangs of young people
who attack and rob stores and citizens in such cities as Chicago.

The failure of our political parties to address the
true needs of the nation has soured almost everyone on our system of
government.Politics is more about
divisive cultural warfare than problem solving.All of that leaves most of us feeling disconnected and with a sense that
the middle class has been shoved over a cliff, now the forgotten class.

Yet, during the past three years, all of the
corporations below made a lot of money. Yet all of them paid net taxes that
were below zero for those three years combined.

How is that possible? Well, it turns out that instead
of paying in taxes to the federal government, they were actually getting money
back.

"If you look
at Washington, you see permanently camped on the banks of the Potomac spread
around in concentric circles an army representing thousands of selfish
interests. The sole purpose of their presence is to plunder, by hook or crook,
the public treasury for the benefit of their particular people or
corporations."
-- Charlie Reese

One easy way to cut government waste -

Despite promises to cut spending, Politicians have
increase their ‘vacations’!

Mrs. Obama and
children (and huge entourage) visited S. Africa this week.How nice.The Obama’s take more expensive vacation than just about any other
President (except for perhaps Clinton who visited something like 52
countries).It cost a ton of taxpayer
bucks to visit Africa, Spain, Europe, etc.

Indeed, all politicians spend a boatload of our money
on fancy trips, often supposedly to “see first hand’ what the situation is in -
You Name the Country.

What a load of horse manure.What the hell do we pay generals, and
ambassadors for?Pick up the damned
phone and call to find out what’s going on!

Politicians are driven around in limos, eat at nothing
but first class restaurants, have the best health care and clubs and more…all
at taxpayer expense.Talk about cutting
waste, start with Washington.

Although the White House refuses to share the actual
cost for a trip to HI, here’s a breakdown we found:

>Mrs. Obama’s early flight to Hawaii: $63,000
(White House Dossier)

>Obama’s round trip flight to Hawaii: $1 million
(GAO estimates)

>Housing in beachfront homes for Secret Service and
Seals in Kailua ($1,200 a day for 14 days): $16,800

>Costs for White House staff staying at Moana
Hotel: $134,400 ($400 per day for 24 staff) – excluding meals and other room
costs

-Costs for car rentals and fuel for White House staff
staying at Moana Hotel (Secret Service imports most of the cars used here to
escort the president)

-Surveillance before the president arrives

-Travel costs for Secret Service and White House staff
traveling ahead of the President

Source:The
Blaze.com

“This is an important issue for a variety of reasons,
not the least of which is the fact that millions of dollars are spent on flying
lawmakers all around the world,” says Craig Holman of Public Citizen, a
consumer advocacy group. “It is a form of influence peddling when sponsored by
private entities. When the government pays for it, we need to know that tax dollars
are being used wisely instead of funding junkets.”

Lawmakers can travel at taxpayers' expense or accept
free trips to symposiums paid for by academic institutions and think tanks. The
latter often gets lawmakers and their family members to exotic destinations for
a little food for thought and a whole lot of wining and dining.Each trip costs taxpayers an average of
$220,000!

Our Washington ruling class cost a fortune.Tell them to take a bus!

Use Listerine to disinfect your home and get rid of mold.Spritz a solution of half water and half
mouth wash on surfaces including grout.Let stand a couple of minutes and wipe clean.

PM’s Betty Shocker Compendium of Useful Stuff…

FEMA has an excellent booklet titled Risks and Hazards: A State by State Guide. It is a state by state guide covering
tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, snow and extreme cold, tsunamis,
nuclear power plants, and nuclear attack (the "Big One" not
terrorists/small scale attacks). The booklet will give you an idea of the
possibility of these threats for your state/region.

The Poor Man
probably owns close to 25 domain names.Although I’ve never attempted to sell them, there are plenty of folks
making money by selling domain names, some with a website already attached to
them (plenty of examples on eBay).

You may recall stories of entrepreneurs who owned
WalMart.com and other major names before such retailers decided to increase
sales through a web presence.Imagine
their surprise when they learned had already been taken (along with several
variations)!Nearly all of the major
retailers ponied up some big bucks to buy back their domain name and it was all
perfectly legally.

Most domain names can be reserved for about $10.You can find such registrars by going to
Google and typing in “domain names’ into the search engine.I use NameCheap.com and GoDaddy.You’ll often find specials for less than $2
as I did recently on GoDaddy.The ‘com’
domain names are becoming somewhat scarce and there are many others to use now
such as ‘Biz,’ ‘US’, ‘Net,’ ‘Org,” ’Info,” etc.

Once you own the name and wish to sell it, you can use
eBay or via sites such as:

SEDO.com or BuyDomains.com

If you have some basic website building skills, create
a basic website to enhance the value.Many of the domain names I own are similar to PoorManSurvival.com and/or
deal with frugal living.All of them use
‘redirects’ to steer folks to my main site as a traffic builder.

Clean your keyboard with a cotton swab dipped in
rubbing alcohol; use rubbing alcohol to clean TV and Computer monitors and
other electronics too (we use it to clean DVDs too).

More Ways to Get Discounts

Bargain masters already use the internet and such
sites as Groupon to grab great deals.More and more such sites seem to pop up each week.The ‘local deal’ has been a huge hit among
the frugal living.Sites like Groupon
and Restaurant.com negotiate special discount rates with merchants and then
resell the vouchers to the public.

Back in the day, I did the same thing with newspaper
publishers.I’d buy full page ads at
deeply discounted rates (usually getting their best customer rate) because I’d
pay cash upfront.I’d then resell blocks
of those ads to other merchants at a discount.Made some nice cash in that fashion.

Consumers buy the vouchers online with a credit card
and print it out and then use it at the local merchant.Even small cities are getting in on the
act.Some of the newer sites include:

>>LivingSocial.com - which is now in 182
areas and offers the same kinds of deals as Groupon but with a twist…convince
three of your friends to buy the same deal and you get your voucher free!

>>BuyWithMe.com - Although not widespread
yet, their vouchers last a full seven days.

You’ll also want to check out some aggregator sites
which monitor individual sites and consolidates their current offers into a
single list.

Here are some aggregator sites to look at:

>DealNews.com>DealRadar.com>8Coupons.com>Yipit.com

Helpful note:be sure to use the voucher before they expire or try reselling them on a
site such as:Lifesta.com

Use deodorant to stop the sting of an insect bite.The aluminum in it counteracts the pain and
stops the swelling.

How to Use a Compass and Map

The Poor Man does not own or
use GPS.I’m not sure how one would use
it and the few times I’ve driven within someone using such a system, it was
wrong as often as it was right..You can
be your own compass, which is better for backpacking and hiking, especially
when there are no marked trails.

1.First,
determine your relationship to true north by first finding your location on the
map and placing the compass over it.

2.True your
north by locating a visible landmark, such as a hill or stream which is shown
on your map as being due north, south, east or west of you.Use the landmark to adjust for the difference
between true north and magnetic north, which is what the compass needle
indicates.In the US, magnetic north can
vary by up to 20 degrees from true north.

3.Find
midpoints - note the compass bearing of your desired destination.Choose an intermediate landmark located along
the same line, and start hiking toward it.

Any Boy Scout handbook will provide a more
in-depth course on using maps and compasses and more.

Polish your wood furniture with a few drops of baby
oil.Apply to a clean cloth and wipe the
surface - no toxic chemical residue and cheap!Use it on wood picture frames…On old frames, use GoJo to clean and
revitalize the wood.

China’s Rise, Our Demise - The Parting Thought

Feeding the beast that destroys us…

Many
Americans, except for celebrity gossip and sports, do not follow the news that
matters to this country.Few realize the
extent of our national debt due to out-of-control spending by Washington during
the past thirty years.

Even fewer seem to be aware of how our educational
system is failing us, despite massive amounts of public funds poured into
public schools.America has fallen
behind China in every meaningful category from education to spending on infrastructure.It’s being predicted that China will surpass
America as the number one economy before 2020.

It’s been reported that China is now opening economic
zones in the United States, beginning this year in Idaho.The Washington-Wall Street Cartel has
squandered our national resources.Through
an outdated tax system, bureaucratic red tape, the criminalization of almost
all behavior and porous borders, Washington has rendered our country impotent.

State-owned Chinese energy giant CNOOC is buying a
multibillion-dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields,
potentially testing the political waters for further expansion into U.S. energy
reserves.

With the announcement Monday that it would pay up to
$2.2 billion for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy assets, CNOOC lays
claim to a share of properties that eventually could produce up to half a
million barrels a day of oil equivalent

China has recently surpassed Japan as the world’s
number two economy and despite skepticism from some.Although internal scandals and a slowdown
has hampered China, they have no national debt.

China’s rise to economic super power has dire
consequences for the American way of life and will give rise to a new economic
global order.It will alter the
cultural, ethnic and political structure of this country.

What is truly ironic is how mainstream Americans have
fed the beast that is destroying our jobs and way of life.A visit to any WalMart, Hobby Lobby or Harbor
Freight Tools, for instance, will tell you we no longer make anything in this
country.The manufacturing sector is
what built our middle class, something I now call the ‘Whittled Class.”That too is being destroyed and any economics
or political science professor will tell that when a country stops producing
things, its destruction is assured.

It’s no secret that we have the best money government
can buy and the industrial complex has been selling, leaking or losing
technical information to the Chinese for years beginning with Nixon and
Clinton.Special interests rule this
country, not our elected representatives.

Some have suggested our demise has been planned as a
part of the New World Order, under which American workers have been sacrificed
to ‘compete’ with the global society.As
I began writing in the mid-1980s when US corporations began to outsource US
workers to those of sweat shop countries, “burger flipper cannot afford $40K
cars.”

Fortune 500 firms such as General Electric pay no US
income taxes and were at the forefront of shipping US jobs overseas.As our debt continues to climb, housing
prices sink and few decent jobs are found, you might consider stocking up on
Renminbi’s.